Dr Stacy Jupiter
Postdoctoral Fellow
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Research Interests
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Research Interests
From living and working in rural, developing communities, I became acutely aware of the environmental problems associated with deforestation for agricultural activities. My research focuses on identifying downstream consequences of runoff produced by land clearing. In order to understand changes to the physical and biological components of watershed systems, I use a holistic approach that integrates techniques and theory from: ecology; botany and zoology; remote sensing; hydrology, geomorphology, and geochemistry; and aspects of social, economical and political histories of the regions.
My previous work addressed linkages between land clearing, mangrove loss and degradation of nearshore water quality in the Mackay Whitsunday region of central Queensland, Australia. Records of land cover change derived from satellite images and aerial photographs were matched to geochemical proxy records of water quality measured from long-lived corals living adjacent to the catchment drainage systems. The ongoing project is part of a collaboration between researchers at The University of Queensland (Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Guy Marion), The Australian National University (Malcolm McCulloch) and Stanford University (Rob Dunbar), partnered with The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, the Mackay City Council and the Mackay Whitsunday Natural Resource Management Group.
I am currently continuing to apply similar techniques to several other systems, both in Australia and around the world. With researchers at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (Janice Lough, Katharina Fabricius), I am comparing long-term water quality variability between the highly agricultural Wet Tropics region and the less impacted Princess Charlotte Bay region of north Queensland. The ultimate goal is to link the measured water quality differences both with historical land use changes and with present day reef condition in both regions. Additionally, I am collaborating with the U.S. Geological Survey (Mike Field, Curt Storlazzi) to evaluate whether land cover change impacts water quality over the reef on Molokai, Hawaii.
Select Publications
- Jupiter, SD, Potts, DC, Phinn, SR and Duke NC (2006). Natural and anthropogenic changes to mangrove distributions in the Pioneer River Estuary (QLD, Australia). Wetlands Ecology and Management DOI 10.1007/s11273-006-9011-9.
- Lawrence, MG, Jupiter, SD and Kamber BS (2006). Aquatic geochemistry of rare earth elements and yttrium in the Pioneer River catchment, Mackay, Queensland, Australia. Marine and Freshwater Research 57: 725-736.
- Jupiter, SD, Phinn, SR, Duke, NC and Potts, DC (2006). Changing mangrove distributions in the Pioneer estuary (Queensland, Australia): evaluating a technique for monitoring mangrove health. Proceedings of the 10th International Coral Reef Symposium, Okinawa, Japan, 28 June – 2 July, pp. 1727-1731.
- Jupiter, SD (2006). From cane to coral reefs: ecosystem connectivity and downstream responses to land use intensification. Ph.D. thesis. University of California, Santa Cruz.
